Even This CNN Anchor Was Stunned When Obama's China Ambassador Made Outrageous Nazi Claim

By C. Douglas Golden

Published May 9, 2020 at 11:33am

It takes a practiced vulgarian to make a sailor blush. Likewise, it takes a truly outrageous remark by an Obama administration official to dumbfound a CNN anchor.

Max Baucus, once Obama’s ambassador to China, is just such a man.

Baucus served in that position from 2014 until 2017 and had previously been a long-serving senator from Montana. He’s also now gone viral.

Generally speaking, if politicians go viral, it’s either because they’ve done something heartwarming, said something stirring or they’ve embarrassed themselves. This video doesn’t feature Baucus with a puppy or giving an inspirational speech to some first responders, so you guess which one it is.

Baucus was appearing on CNN International Wednesday when he compared the current administration’s rhetoric on China with the incipient years of the Nazi regime or McCarthyism in Washington, D.C.

“The administration’s rhetoric is so strong against China, it’s over the top. We’re entering an era which is similar to Joe McCarthy back when he was red-baiting in the State Department and attacking communism, and a little bit like Hitler in the ’30s,” Baucus said during the interview.

Maybe that was a one-off, right? Nope.

“Now in the United States, if anybody says anything reasonable about China, he or she feels intimidated, worried his head is going to be chopped off,” Baucus continued. “Back in the ’30s in Germany, it was very similar.”

The reaction from CNN’s Hala Gorani should say it all. I know certain verbal miscues should be left out of quotes for obvious reasons, but in this case, they’re really necessary to understand the discomfort level here:

“OK, I, uh, be- be- before I go, in the comparison you’re making here between th- the current U.S., uh, atmosphere in Washington and, uh, Germany in the ’30s, I mean that — that’s a very — that’s a very, you know, kind of — is it, is it, are you being provocative, or do you really believe that there are parallels?”

But no, Obama’s ambassador to China would not yield on the point or admit hyperbole. He meant all that in poker- faced seriousness.

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“I think we’re moving in that direction. I’m not saying we’re there yet,” Baucus said.

“But there are a lot of very responsible people in America who know that this China-bashing is irresponsible and we’re going to pay a price the more it continues.”

Irresponsible. As this rhetoric clearly isn’t.

In the interest of full disclosure, there’s a blurring of lines here as to who’s going to end up paying the price if this keeps on.

The Washington Free Beacon pointed out that “after Trump’s election, [Baucus] established business ties to China. He sits on the board of advisers for the Alibaba Group, one of China’s largest technology firms, and is also on the board of directors of Ingram Micro, which was purchased by a Chinese company in 2016.”

In an appearance on MSNBC in March, he — somewhat unsurprisingly — praised China’s response to coronavirus.

“I think that the big lesson here [is] that when you take charge and when you tell the entire country, Wuhan, other provinces what to do, they get in gear and get the job done,” Baucus said. “I take my hat off to China for doing so.”

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Poster Comment:

Max Baucus has turned out to be a HUGE embarrassment.